Try Not to Fall in Love
by pocahontasneedsherjohnsmith
Summary: Chuck can't quite keep away from Blair, even after she commands him never to say anything to her ever again. Post 3x22. Just a missing moment that I like to imagine happened.


I feel like we didn't get the closure that we deserved at the end of season three. So here is my attempt to rectify that situation. If you're reading my story Do You Still Love Her, then please think of this as a bit of a prelude. I just hate to think that Blair and Chuck would have parted on "don't ever say anything to me, ever again."

XOXO

"Chuck, you can't be coming here anymore." She hissed at her intruder.

"Better not be too hasty there, Waldorf, don't say something you don't mean." She knew he was leering at the innuendo in her words, his clumsy fingers rising to tug at the ties of her robe. She squirmed away from his touch.

"I'm serious. You've crossed a line by being here tonight." She felt nauseous just looking at him. "I told you never to speak to me again." She didn't even know what time it was, but he was too late.

"You don't mean it." His words were drawled, obviously effected by masses and masses of years old scotch.

"I mean it. You need to leave. You make me sick." She backed away from his approaching figure. Her stomach was coiling and she hoped the queasiness would suppress the desire she would never admit feeling. He was cornering her. What could she do? Her mother was in Paris; Dorota was at home with the new baby.

"Blair." His voice, the look in his eye, it was all devastating. Devastation seemed to be the theme of he evening. She saw his fingers rise to touch her cheek and her eyes fluttered closed. Her teeth clenched when his caress brushed across her jaw. The twines in the depths of her stomach tightened.

"Stop it." She sighed, pushing past him to regain her advantage. Their bodies brushed so close that she could feel the electricity thrumming from him.

"Stop what?" His voice was all allure.

"You know what. You don't get to make me feel like this!" She didn't realise that she was screaming at him. "This is your fault, Chuck. You made this mess. You can't just waltz up here in the night and expect me to forgive and forget at the drop of a hat."

"I bought flowers too." He gestured drunkenly to the bouquet that she'd discarded on the desk.

"Are you freaking kidding me?" She yelled, storming over to the offending bouquet and shoving it into the trash, velvety white petals floated down unceremoniously. He shrugged and moved to recline on her bed leisurely. "Chuck, you slept with," she couldn't say her name, " _her_ mere hours ago and you think you can bring some flowers over here and make good?"

"I said I'm sorry." She stared incredulously at him. "Just come here, I'll make it up to you. Come on, just once more for the road."

"You're something else." She said, disgusted. "Get up and get out." She wound her robe tighter around herself.

"Blair…" he said, not moving in the slightest. "I really am sorry. I can't tell you how much I hate myself for it."

She exhaled angrily. "Sorry isn't enough."

"What is?" There was a hint of helpless desperation in his tone now and he sat forward, looking straight through her eyes and into her core.

"I don't know, Chuck." She could hear the pain in her own voice. "I don't know if anything is. It's different this time." She loathed herself for discussing it with him. He shouldn't have been there.

"Please." He implored, hauling himself from his comfy position, moving over to her to take her hand. She snatched it away after a few seconds of bliss. "Tell me what to do. Tell me how to change it."

Blair squeezed her eyes shut.

"Don't do that." His fingers rested on her cheekbones, his touch feather light. "Don't close your eyes. I don't know what you're thinking."

"You don't know what I'm thinking anyway." She responded, but relented and her eyes flickered open. He stood so close that she could feel his warm breath on her face.

"I know what you're thinking more than I know what I'm thinking." He relaxed a tentative hand on her shoulder and she shuddered involuntarily. "You're thinking that I am an ass and I have no right to breathe the same oxygen as you, much less touch you." He paused, his palm trailing down her arm and to her fingers, wherein he laced his own with hers. "But you're also battling with your instinct to forgive me." His voice was no more than a seductive whisper and her trembles were coming thick and fast.

Her breathing was shaky. "But I can't." She pulled herself away from him regretfully. "You don't understand. I feel humiliated, betrayed and like I'm going to throw up every ten seconds." Her voice broke and she watched his eyebrows furrow. He closed his eyes this time and she didn't need to see into them to understand the pain there.

"Chuck Bass fucks it up again." He muttered under his breath. An intuitive need to comfort the man she loved bubbled inside of her and she moved forward. Mistake. He saw her resolve faltering and before she could protest, he had her wrapped in his arms.

The floodgates opened. She thought she'd cried her last earlier in the day. The bittersweet comfort of being in his arms felt so wrong, but she couldn't tear herself away from him. Perhaps, had she not been so lost in her own tears, she would have felt the dampness from his eyes on her own shoulder.

It was so unjust; she thought amid the tears, how could two people who loved each other so intensely be victim to that very same love.

"You need to go." She said, pulling herself from his arms. She was overtly aware of how little she wore, and the longer he spent with her, the more she'd bend her own rules for him. "I can't do this. We can't do this." She mumbled, pushing the insistent hands that sought her away.

"Why not? Can't we just try? I'm so sorry and I love you. I made a mistake, maybe the worst yet. But please, try to forgive me. We'll get away from here; go to Italy, France, Germany. Wherever you want, we'll go there to escape and mend." He was pleading. It would have been humbling in any other situation to see Chuck Bass beg.

Her face contorted in pain. Every fibre of her being wanted to say yes. She forgave him in that moment late at night in her room. She'd not deny him anything if he'd ask it of her.

"I can't." Was her response.

"Who would you offend by being with me?" He asked frantically.

She shook her head. "I'd offend myself, Chuck. I can forgive you, but I wouldn't be able to forgive myself. I know you're sorry and I am too, but I can't let myself be one of those women who men walk all over. I wouldn't be able to live with myself."

The anguish in his pained expression almost broke her. "Blair, please. I can't live without you, I won't."

"I'm not _giving_ you a _choice_." She said tenderly, but firmly. "You made your own choice today when you jumped straight into bed with someone else." He opened his mouth to speak but she continued instead. "I need somebody who wait for me, somebody who will have faith in me. You've shown me that it isn't you."

He was quick to protest. "No, it is. I would wait until the end of time for you, Blair. You know I trust you more than anybody else."

"That's not true, Chuck." She sighed. "I want to believe it, more than anything, but it's not true. If it were you would have waited. Maybe one day that will be you, but now it isn't."

"It broke my heart when you didn't come." He said weakly. "And then when you showed up at the Empire with my flowers, I thought if I just pretended nothing had happened then…"

"Then what? I'd never find out? It would all go back to normal and we'd end up living happily ever after?" She knew she sounded bitchy, but he was so blind. "Chuck I would have found out. It would have been worse if we'd reconciled properly first."

"I'm so sorry." He frowned. "Please just try to give me a second chance."

"This _was_ your second chance." She reached across to take his hand. "Chuck I'll never stop caring about you. You're always going to be a part of me, but I couldn't forgive myself if I kept forgiving every discrepancy or screw up."

"I won't make any more mistakes." He swore, squeezing her hand.

"You can't promise me that." She ran her thumb down the length of his index finger. "You're asking me to put my heart on the line for you _again_. I don't have the energy to take that risk. Please don't ask this of me."

He looked like he wanted to die; she imagined that her countenance was similar.

"So there's no hope for us?" He questioned forlornly.

Chuck and Blair, Blair and Chuck had no hope for a future together. It hardly seemed a feasible concept.

"I don't know." She admitted quietly. "I can't imagine a life without you. But maybe that's wrong." She said miserably. "I think we need to have some time apart. We need to meet new people and learn how to live independently of each other. I've been only yours for so long that I don't know how it feels to even want anybody else anymore."

He couldn't quite say the same, of course. "Blair I just want you. I've only ever wanted you since the first time you let me into your life. Anything else is mere interference." His words were pretty, but she didn't know if she could believe them. "I've made some… poorly informed choices, but I only want you. I don't want to learn how to love someone else. I don't think I can."

"I'm not asking you to fall in love, Chuck. In fact, I think I'd be offended if you did." She found the energy to give him a small smile. "I just think we should find our freedom again. I need to forgive you on my own terms."

"I don't want to let you go." He confessed sadly. The melancholy in his voice broke her heart in ways it hadn't yet fractured.

"I know." She released a breath that she hadn't realised she was holding. "I don't want to let you go either."

"Then don't. We can work it out. You said yourself that love makes everything simple." He appealed to the romantic in her. "I love you more than ever. You know how hard it was for me to admit it, but I do and I don't want to let you go now."

"I want to. I want to so much." She promised quietly. "But I just can't. If I can't respect myself, then how can I be the woman you want to be with?"

"It's me that you shouldn't respect."

"I don't. At least, not right now anyway. So I can't allow myself to follow my heart. We have to go our separate ways." She told him conclusively.

His face twisted again in the torture of losing her.

"It doesn't have to be forever. When and if we end up together, we will be stronger." She vowed, finally releasing his hand.

They stood for a few moments, unsure of what would come next. She really looked at him in those instants. His pastel check shirt was crumpled, paisley bowtie coming loose. His hair was dishevelled, as though he'd run his fingers through it excessively. His strong jaw twitched while he watched her right back. She was clad only in a silk slip and her flimsy robe, she felt his eyes roaming across her body hungrily, catching his last glimpses.

"I suppose I should go." He said dejectedly and looked towards the door.

"It's so late. You should stay tonight and leave in the morning." She wasn't asking, she was informing, and frankly, she was concerned about his welfare. It was clear he'd had more than enough to drink in the wake of the disaster.

He looked up at her in disbelief, his amber eyes wide. "Are you sure you want me to?"

She shrugged. "It's not like we've never slept in the same bed before. Come on," she motioned for him to follow her as she climbed under the covers. He kicked off his shoes and slid his jacket off of his shoulders before joining her. "Besides, I don't want to be by myself. It has been an eventful day." She said sardonically, resting her head against the pillows.

"Feels like home here." He said, his voice hazy with drowsiness. "Thank you." 

She smiled in spite of herself. That he loved her was not in question. It was really going to be a feat to give this man up, she thought, when he turned over, asleep already, and tried to cuddle closer to her.

When she woke at some ungodly hour, she found her limbs totally entangled with his. It was delicious, it was burning, it was wrong. She didn't want to open her eyes, that was, until she heard his breathing falter slightly.

"Chuck." She whispered so quietly that he'd only have heard it if he was awake too.

Silence filled the dark room for a moment or two. "Blair." Came his hushed response.

His warm breath tickled her cheek and she allowed her eyes to adjust to his face. His eyes were closed so she lifted a hand to trace the line of his strong jaw, around his chin, across his cheekbone. She paused, her fingers hovering just above his mouth; she continued her path, her finger trailing across his lips, outlining their shape. His breath was shaky like hers.

"Heaven help me." She whispered to herself before straining her neck so she could touch her own lips to his. It was the sweetest of kisses. It was only, what felt like hours later, that she realised what she was doing. His tongue danced enticingly with hers and it took all of the willpower she possessed to pull away from him.

Chuck said nothing, just held her closer to him while they drifted off again.

She was first to wake in the morning, his arm still firmly wound around her form. She gazed at the shadows cast on his face. He was beautiful, truly. Reluctantly, she removed herself from his embrace and insatiably took in her final looks at Chuck Bass. Sighing inaudibly, Blair made her way to the desk, pulling her stationary from the drawer and scribbling a quick letter for him to read.

She'd already decided she'd go to Paris and she saw no reason to wait and be tortured any longer. Nothing had changed; she still had to leave him. His claims of love like no other weren't enough to change what he had done. In truth, she didn't think anything was. So Blair Waldorf penned her goodbyes and fled as soon as she could, stooping to kiss his forehead one last time before she did.

She was on her way to France before he even woke, and Serena had instructions to bring Blair's things when she came to join her.

Chuck's foggy mind didn't realise, initially, that he wasn't in his own bed. He reached out for the warm body that he'd been sure had been there only minutes ago. Forcing his eyes open, he became aware that his surroundings were not those of his Empire Penthouse, but of Blair Waldorf's bedroom. But where was the lady herself?

Rubbing his eyes, Chuck padded into the bathroom, searched her closet and even the roof- she wasn't supposed to climb out there, Eleanor went mad when she'd found her on the roof, aged seven, but it had become her safe place. It wasn't until he sat back down on her unmade bed that he saw it. The piece of paper on the pillow beside him was monogrammed BW. He was hesitant to turn it over, fearing he already knew what it said. Curiosity got the better of him. Her beautiful and meticulous script filled the page with words he was afraid to read.

 _My Dear Chuck,_

 _when you read this, I shall be half way to Paris. Please don't come looking for me there or try to contact me. I need this time to find myself again and I can't do that with you over my shoulder, even though it may be what my heart craves. Serena will join me later this week, if you have anything you absolutely must tell us, please talk to her instead._

 _I wish I could tell you that I can forgive you and move past the events of last night, I wish that more than anything. But I can't, and I won't disrespect myself again for you. It wouldn't be fair to either of us if I were to act as though it hadn't happened._

 _I want you to remember that you will always be my family, Chuck. If ever you need me, I will not cease to be your family. I will always have time for you, even if I can't be with you in the way that you want._

 _Take this time for yourself, don't wait around for me. I think you need to experience life outside of a relationship. Although I would never give up what we had this year, it was intense and passionate, I don't know if the world was ready for us. I don't know if the world will ever be ready for us._

 _Take good care of yourself, Bass. I will always love you, even if I can't allow myself to be in love with you._

 _Yours most truly,_

 _Blair_

 _P.s please try not to fall in love with some other woman whilst I'm gone._

His heart sunk deep in his chest as he read her note over and over. He'd lost everything. His hand went to where his jacket was discarded on the floor of her bedroom. Chuck fumbled inside the pocket, pulling out the small velvet box. Flipping the lid open and admiring the Harry Winston that belonged on her finger, Chuck Bass vowed he'd never let it go until it was in its rightful place.


End file.
